I come at this review as someone who has not upgraded her computer in almost exactly three and a half years. My laptop before this was a “mid-2010” 15-inch MacBook Pro that recently took as many as 10 precious seconds opening the System Preferences menu while having fainting spells over simple GIFs. I nearly pulled the trigger on the MacBook Air refresh earlier this year, but the possibility of a Haswell processor, even better battery life, and a retina screen in the next generation of MacBook Pros stayed my hand.

I ended up selecting the mid-range 13-inch retina MacBook Pro, as the top-tier option comes with an unavoidable $300 bump to a 512GB drive (and an improved processor). For that amount of money, I decided it would be better to beef up my home storage situation and try to carry less material around on the computer itself. In this review, I’m holding the Pro up against a 2013 MacBook Air with an i7 processor at nearly the same price point.

The only upgrade I took for my Pro was for the RAM—to 16GB from the stock 8GB, because a healthy portion of my job involves photo and video editing. These tasks are already fiddly and moderately enraging enough without a beach ball cropping up for a few seconds after every action.

Enlarge/ The 13-inch retina MacBook Pro stacked on top of the 13-inch MacBook Air.

Hardware: distinct, but not so different

The retina MacBook Pro weighs 3.46 pounds, and the 13-inch MacBook Air weighs 2.96 pounds—a difference of exactly half a pound. I expected this weight difference to be barely noticeable when spread over the whole body of a computer, but the relative heft is easy to feel in the retina MacBook Pro.

The slightness of the MacBook Air’s design and uneven weight distribution may affect this perception a little. But stacked on top of each other and standing side by side, the Macbook Pro is actually more compact in length and width while sitting lower to the ground than the Air is.

Like its larger 15-inch brother, the retina MacBook Pro has a full-size HDMI port, two USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader, two Thunderbolt ports, a headphone jack, and a port for the power cable.

The retina screen on the retina MacBook Pro is pin-sharp and beautiful. I will cop to being someone who is less affected by this feature, or at least, I don’t melt into a wailing puddle when I meet a 1366x768 screen. But the screen does make visual tasks more of a pleasure. During photo editing, it’s now extremely evident which of my pictures are really, really sharp and which are just slightly, maddeningly blurry.

Enlarge/ The 13-inch retina MacBook Pro, here stacked on top, is a fraction of an inch shorter in both length and width than the 13-inch MacBook Air.

Enlarge/ The hinge vents in the 13-inch retina MacBook Pro seem absurdly large, but then, the model is down to only one fan.

Most of the keyboards Apple now makes are near-identical in design, but I do notice that key travel on the MacBook Air is a little shallower than on the retina MacBook Pro. Both are noticeably shallower than my old MacBook Pro. I never liked this march of key wells toward being almost nonexistent, and I don’t really like the flat tactile feel of the MacBook Air keyboard. The Pro’s isn’t a ton better, but it’s something.

This isn't a point of comparison but something that seems worth noting: almost as soon as I brought the Air and Pro into the same house, they began a power struggle over the Wi-Fi connection. Eventually the Air established dominance and blocked the Pro entirely, unless I put the Air to sleep. This was despite other computers peacefully co-existing using the same router. Maybe the Air sensed the competition, but more than likely, this is a router problem. If you happen to be using my same Netgear router, this is an apparent incompatibility worth looking out for.

One of the reasons I originally made the jump from the original MacBook to the MacBook Pro line was the speakers. There's more power, and videos and music sounded less like they were taking place in an Altoids tin. The disparity in volume and quality between consumer and pro Apple laptops is less than it once was. While the Air can get decently loud, it was slightly cracklier and tinnier at the highest volume levels.

Performance: closer than you might think

Full details on the CPUs being tested in these benchmarks:

13” 2013 rMBP — 2.4GHz Intel Core i5-4258U (Turbo up to 2.9GHz)

15” 2013 rMBP — 2.0GHz Intel Core i7-4750HQ (Turbo up to 3.2GHz)

13” 2013 MBA — 1.7GHz Intel Core i7-4650U (Turbo up to 3.3GHz)

13” 2012 rMBP — 2.9GHz Intel Core i7-3520M (Turbo up to 3.6GHz)

The 2012 Pro in these tests is not the base model but the highest-end model with upgraded CPU. However, the Haswell processors in the 2013 version are enough of an improvement that they close the gap a bit between the disparate clock speeds.

In Cinebench, the retina MacBook Pro scarcely edges out the 2013 Core i7 MacBook Air we tested in multi-core performance, and it's actually bested by the MacBook Air in single core. In Cinebench’s fps marks, the retina MacBook Pro manages to outperform its 2012 predecessor, though it breaks about even with the MacBook Air in terms of numbers.

Likewise, the retina MacBook Pro remains competitive with the other i7 computers we tested in Geekbench’s multi-core tests while falling behind in single-core ones.

The only benchmarks where the retina MacBook Pro manages to smoke this MacBook Air are in the Unigine Heaven and Valley tests. It’s a small victory, but the Pro manages a scant few frames per second more than the Air, finally displaying its graphics-processing superiority.

Ultimately I’m surprised (but shouldn’t be) to see so much performance parity here between a pro-level computer and an ultra-portable, though the two computers are the same price ($1549 for the Air, and $1699 for the Pro). I feel ever so slightly like I’ve been had, paying over $100 more for an extra half-pound of nothing.

From a short-term performance standpoint, stepping from a 13-inch Air to a 13-inch Pro at the same price point is marginal at best, as long as Intel’s turbo mode can kick in to give the Air small but significant boosts. Where the Pro will shine is in longer periods of high activity, like rendering video or exporting a batch of photos. At that point, the Iris GPU’s superiority will come into play, and the Pro will exhibit its differences.

Speaking in year-to-year improvements, the Iris graphics, though still integrated, are a substantial improvement over the Intel HD series the 13-inch MacBook Pros were stuck with last year.

All I know is, when I tried to play a YouTube video full-screen at 1080p, the MacBook Air began giving me lip in the form of periodic stutters. This is the same type of problem I originally moved to the Pro line to escape, and in my unfortunately entitled way, I can’t believe this kind of thing is still happening in a practically new computer.

Battery life

Between the new Haswell processor and the power management tweaks in OS X Mavericks, the retina MacBook Pro is purported to get a very long battery life for a pro-level machine. Apple quotes it at nine hours of wireless Web or video playback from a 6591mAh battery.

The idle power management skills showed off as much as possible during our Web-browsing test. With brightness at 50 percent and the backlight disabled, the retina MacBook Pro was able to get 15 hours and 33 minutes from the full battery. This usage case won’t apply unless you are giving your retina MacBook Pro the most modest of tasks, like working in a text editor with utilities turned off or very slow-paced browsing.

When we cranked up the testing conditions, the battery life dropped like a stone. When we performed the same browsing test with the brightness at 100 percent and an MP3 looping in the background at 50 percent volume, we scored only six hours and 40 minutes. This is quite a spread in performance, but in my normal moderate-to-heavy, on-and-off daily workflow, I found that getting about eight to nine hours from the battery was a realistic expectation. I tend to keep the brightness low, but I run an IM client, Tweetdeck, and (generally speaking) between 10 and a billion tabs in Chrome. There's also some occasional photo editing and exporting with Lightroom.

The Air got 16 hours and six minutes on the first browser-only test. For two computers occupying pretty different price brackets, the difference in battery life is almost negligible. However, you could definitely get a full workday out of the MacBook Air, while the MacBook Pro may leave you stranded and computer-less for the last few hours if your workload gets too intense.

Enlarge/ The screens of the two computers are similar in color quality, though the MacBook Air's is a little faded at higher brightness levels.

The rise of the Pro

Even for buyers who are deciding between the base high-end model of the MacBook Air and the base lowest-end MacBook Pro, the Pro remains a compelling choice despite its rather large price difference. A computer without a retina screen like the MacBook Air is just not as forward-looking and future-proof, not to mention the rest of the performance improvements. The Pro also has a significant edge in sustained graphics-processing tasks.

When the configurations match up in price, the MacBook Air is difficult to justify when the Pro is in the picture. That is, unless you happen to be the type of user for whom extreme portability and a few extra hours on top of an already-long battery life trump performance. For my uses, the value proposition of the Pro makes it the better buy.